


With Ash in Your Mouth/You’ll Ask It to Burn Again

by Veni_vidi_vici



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Magical Realism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-02
Updated: 2016-06-02
Packaged: 2018-07-11 21:30:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7071115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Veni_vidi_vici/pseuds/Veni_vidi_vici
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Percival's secret saves Lancelot's life. </p><p>(Magical Realism is Fun.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	With Ash in Your Mouth/You’ll Ask It to Burn Again

**Author's Note:**

> So admittedly, this was a part of a larger 5+1 style story that involves soulmates (but not soul-marks?) I've been having a lot of trouble writing the final (plus one) chapter, so I temporarily abandoned it. I thought I'd put this one out there as a feeler, and if people want me to finish it, please let me know! 
> 
> The title is from the Iron and Wine song: Cinder and Smoke

I.

Perched on the edge of cliff-side mansion, Lancelot, no longer shielded by his glasses, took in his breath-taking surroundings. Without his glasses, he was hardly ‘James the Kingsman making a heroic decision,’ rather he was more like ‘James with a stupid, desperate idea.’ He shifted, rocks crumbling faster from beneath his pristine black oxfords than the sweet bits of his mother’s apple crumble. His poor, dear mother. His poor, poor mother who dreamt of her son marrying a duchess and having oodles of children she could call her ‘petite crumpets.’

No, no, instead his mother ended up with a son who was currently scaling the side of a cliff on an extraction mission with a man tossed over his shoulder, running from armed thugs. Not that she had the slightest clue. He should really call her more often, though. 

Lancelot gulped and said a quick prayer. He wasn’t even religious. God, presumably god, probably grumbled and moaned when nonreligious folks like himself begged for help in tight situations. Percival, Lancelot’s eyes lit up as he remembered the small fact about the agent he was currently carrying fireman style, had grown up Catholic. 

“God help me,” Lancelot mumbled as the sounds of gunfire and stampede of military boots grew louder.

“God fucking dammit.” He could practically hear God’s disapproval. 

Percival’s Catholic though, probably, maybe, so this is going to work. James the Kingsman’s plan was going to get them both of this shitty situation alive, and Percival the injured Kingsman was going to help with his religious essence. A barely-audible whine coming from over Lancelot’s shoulder caused him to take a deep breath and look down at the blue tide lazily curling up and drifting in the direction of the shore, toward the angry, jagged rocks that grew dark when the water finally reached them with a crash. 

“Bora lá, pessoal!” A deep voice barked orders and Lancelot knew it was now or never. 

“On three!” He declared to himself, but in reality waited until after he had already said ‘three’ in his head (he should really be more clear, once this mistake caused the premature detonation of some C4) before he was falling, falling, falling, into the blue abyss that waited below. 

The ultramarine blue waves received the plummeting Lancelot and Percival with open arms, tugging them beneath the foaming surface. Lancelot gasped for air, Percival’s weight making it exponentially more difficult to escape from the grasp of the ocean currents. He forced himself and his partner below the water when he caught site of a few scattered guards peering over the cliff’s edge. 

The waves hummed happily below as Lancelot dipped down beneath the surface with Percival in tow. The undercurrents sent them tumbling and spiraling and Lancelot felt a flood of relief as the other agent clung on tighter to his soaking wet garments, desperately holding on for dear life. 

When they reemerged, the thugs were gone. 

Lancelot bobbed up and down in the water with a now semi-conscious Percival slumped behind him piggy-back style breathing lightly and drooling slightly onto the shoulder of ruined white shirt (he’d long since shed his favorite plaid jacket). He wanted to laugh and throw his fists into the air like the first time he’d completed the missing-parachute test during training. Instead, he just smirked to himself. He knew Percival was Catholic. 

“We have to get over to that boat and wait for the chopper,” Lancelot told Percival, pointing at a medium-sized fishing boat floating some 200 meters away as he slogged toward where the water was only chest deep, but far enough away from the shore to keep them covered. Percival mouthed at the fabric of Lancelot’s shirt, maybe trying to say something. 

“Yes, there is a chopper coming,” Lancelot replied to Percival’s sounds. He had activated the distress signal from his divers’ watch not moments ago and surely a Kingsman agent would be coming to get them at any second. His sore muscles screamed in protest as he continued to pull the other agent toward the boat, leaving a steady trail of blood behind them. 

“You really should lay off the extra bacon,” Lancelot complained. “Or is it all lean muscle?” Of course it’s all lean muscle.” He amended his criticism in response to the silence. He doesn’t think he’s actually ever seen a burly Catholic, at least not that he can recall. Something to do with gluttony being a deadly sin and all. They’re all thinly built, the athletic ones a hint more sturdy, but they’re all built like the Kennedy’s. 

The Kennedy’s, Lancelot scoffed. Now there was a family that the Kingsmen had a long history with. 

The cold of the water was really beginning to seep into Lancelot’s bones and he had to clench his teeth to keep them from chattering. His hands were pleasantly numb, but the rest of his body felt like it’d been buried alive during a Siberian snow storm. Percival must be the temperature of a ghost, Lancelot thought, but it was right then that he noticed the unexpected feeling of warmth creeping across his back, spreading from the center of his spine where he could just barely feel the rise and fall of the injured agent’s chest. 

Like the mid-July sun on his back, Lancelot thought.

He trudged ahead, resolutely putting aside his curiosity for now and leaning into the heat that successfully combatted the unsavory cold that washed up against him every few seconds.

“Almost there,” he shifted Percival, whose legs were spidered around his waist and had begun to slip, the warmth sliding further down the length of Lancelot’s spine as he did so. 

“Help me out here,” he halted in the water and spoke softly to the other agent. The soothing voice came naturally as he tried to coax the agent into handling some of his own weight. It was unfair, he knew, but they were so close and Lancelot, quite frankly, needed the warmth that Percival was somehow providing. Proximity, probably, he posited. 

A muffled sound came from Percival’s lips as he tried to pull himself up against Lancelot’s back, the warmth growing hotter and spreading further across the second agent’s deltoids. Percival’s arms snaked around his neck, one wrist resting lightly like the head of the serpent on the jut of his collarbone. With Percival coiled around him, the heat was enough for Lancelot began regaining feeling in his core. 

Where was that damn chopper. 

A moment of panic rushed through Lancelot’s veins as he watched the anchor of the fishing vessel move skyward into the hands of a bearded man. The boat began to move away and Lancelot began running to the best of his ability toward it, Percival bouncing around behind him, but a sudden sand drop caught him by surprise and without a moment’s notice, they were both face to face with a cloud of blood and sand, fighting to find the surface. 

By the time his head breached the surface, the boat was long gone. He hauled Percival up beside him and hugged the now-chilly agent to his chest. Obscured vision be damned. 

Clouds broke overhead, and rays of weak, blond sunshine cast a light on the single tiny vessel floating where the fishing boat had just been. Lolling waves lapped at the white dinghy awaiting them. The men must have spotted them and while not wanting to get involved, they must have left a lifeboat behind so they wouldn’t drown. How clever. Or maybe it was God, Lancelot thought, but he changed mind quickly; he’d rather stick with clever humans than divine intervention. It was his ingenuity, after all, that got them out of that building. 

Lancelot rolled onto his back and reached out to gather Percival, who was doing the dead man’s float (hopefully he was only pretending), into his arms, pressing the other man’s back to his chest. Percival hung on, freezing hands gripping the arm that was slung across over his miraculously-still-beating heart. 

Lancelot felt the warmth, he had no doubt now that it was radiating from the other agent, caressing the skin of his forearm. He angled them toward the dinghy wobbling in the waves nearby and swam clumsily on his back and with one arm toward it. A sigh of relief escaped his blue lips as he first laid Percival in the wooden lifeboat, before climbing in himself. 

A gasp warbled from Lancelot’s lips as he observed the passed out Percival, laying at an uncomfortable angle in the small boat. A red glow emitted from Percival’s chest, from where his weakly beating heart was located. Lancelot reached out to touch it — a surge of smoldering heat licked the palm of his hand. 

“Bloody beautiful!” Lancelot cried out, not caring who heard. Percival turned his head at the sound, one hand coming up to rest over the blazing spot, but he remained silent and still otherwise, the little sun threatening to burst from his chest cavity still flaring in the daylight. 

Lancelot brought his hand up to rest beside Percival’s slim fingers, and felt the slightly erratic, but still present beat of the other man’s heart. 

“Fucking stunning, Percy! You fucking amazing miracle!” He was screaming now, throwing his head up to the heavens where a helicopter has appeared and was approaching their location at an alarming pace. The drum of the propellers against the air drowned out his shouts. 

The hot spot on Percival’s chest disappeared once they got inside the chopper. A Kingsman medic hovered over him, fussing over his wounds with gloved hands while Lancelot looked on with concerned eyes. He wanted to reach out, feel that marvelous heat again, but when a scratchy, warm blanket was draped wordlessly over his shoulders, he lost all resolve and gripped to the edges of the cloth and stared at Percival’s chest. He grinned.

‘Do it again,’ he didn’t say to Percival. But the thought echoed in his head as the chopper whisked them away from the sandy shores of South America.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and Kudos always appreciated (:


End file.
